from the ya-think? dept

About a month ago, we noted that a federal court had granted a temporary injunction blocking a subpoena issued by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, demanding all sorts of information from Google. At the time, the judge only said that Google's argument was "stronger" than Hood's, but said a full ruling would come out in time. That full ruling [pdf] is now out, and boy, does it make Jim Hood's anti-Google vendetta look questionable -- specifically saying that there is "significant evidence of bad faith" on the part of Hood to try to use his government position to unconstitutionally coerce Google into making changes to its service that it has no legal obligation to make.

If you don't recall, Hood has a long-standing obsession with Google, despite having an astounding level of ignorance about how the search engine actually operates. In his anti-Google rants, Hood makes statements that are blatantly false and repeatedly argues that Google is to blame merely because its search engine finds websites that Hood's office doesn't like and doesn't think should exist at all. And that doesn't even touch on the now known fact that the MPAA secretly funded Hood's investigation and wrote nearly every word of the threatening letters sent to Google.

While Hood and various MPAA supporters have insisted that he's clearly in the right, at least federal judge Henry Wingate doesn't see much to support that. Hood tried desperately to keep this issue out of federal court, using a variety of claims, including the so-called "Younger Abstention" which argues that federal courts should stay out of certain issues. However, as Wingate notes, that only applies in three specific cases, none of which apply to Hood's campaign against Google -- and, even if any of them did apply, there's a further exception for "bad faith" -- and Wingate is pretty convinced that Hood is acting in bad faith:

Moreover, even if the Younger elements were satisfied here, the court would not
be required to abstain here because an exception to the application of the doctrine
applies. Indeed, federal courts may disregard the Younger doctrine when a state court
proceeding was brought in bad faith or with the purpose of harassing the federal
plaintiff... Google has
presented significant evidence of bad faith, allegedly showing that Attorney General
Hood’s investigation and issuance of the subpoena represented an effort to coerce
Google to comply with his requests regarding content removal. As previously
discussed, the Attorney General made statements, on multiple occasions, which purport
to show his intent to take legal action against Google for Google’s perceived
violations. When Google declined to fulfill certain requests, the Attorney General
issued a 79-page subpoena shortly thereafter. The court is persuaded that this conduct
may evidence bad faith on the part of the Attorney General.

The court also notes that Hood clearly recognizes that many of his attacks on Google are blocked by Section 230 of the CDA (which, again, say you can't blame a service provider for actions of its users), because Hood himself signed a letter to Congress asking for Section 230 to be amended to exempt investigations by state attorneys general (we wrote about that dangerous effort at the time as well).

From there, Judge Wingate notes that it seems clear that Hood is likely violating Google's First Amendment rights too, even noting that the subpoena itself appears to be retaliation for protected free expression:

Furthermore, the court also is persuaded that Google has demonstrated a
substantial likelihood that it will prevail on its claim that Attorney General Hood has
violated Google’s First Amendment rights by: regulating Google’s speech based on its
content; by retaliating against Google for its protected speech (i.e., issuing the
subpoena); and by seeking to place unconstitutional limits on the public’s access to
information. First, the relevant, developing jurisprudence teaches that Google’s
publishing of lawful content and editorial judgment as to its search results is
constitutionally protected.... The Attorney
General’s interference with Google’s judgment, particularly in the form of threats of legal
action and an unduly burdensome subpoena, then, would likely produce a chilling effect
on Google’s protected speech, thereby violating Google’s First Amendment rights.

Additionally, it is well-settled that the Attorney General may not retaliate against
Google for exercising its right to freedom of speech by prosecuting, threatening
prosecution, and conducting bad-faith investigations against Google.... As
explained supra, Google has submitted competent evidence showing that the Attorney
General issued the subpoena in retaliation for Google’s likely protected speech, namely
its publication of content created by third-parties. Given the gravity of the rights
asserted herein, the court finds it appropriate to enjoin further action on behalf of the
Attorney General until a determination on the merits of Google’s claims is made.

Judge Wingate also sides with Google on the 4th Amendment, noting that the broad subpoena appears to be a "burdensome fishing expedition" that goes well beyond what the Attorney General is allowed to request.

Google also wins on the key issue that the MPAA was using Hood to press: how it handles searches for copyright-covered material. As Google points out, copyright is a federal law issue, not a state law issue, so the requests regarding copyright are preempted by federal law. Hood (and, apparently, his MPAA-paid lawyers who helped draw up the subpoena) tried, weakly, to get around this preemption by arguing that by finding unauthorized material, Google was "misleading customers." That doesn't fly:

The Attorney General admits that certain requests contained in the subpoena
“could arguably be used to show copyright infringement” (AG Response, p. 30), but
argues that the same information could also be used to expose Google’s various
practices of misleading customers. The court is not persuaded that the Attorney
General’s posited theoretical basis for making these requests is sufficient for the
purpose of rebutting Google’s preemption allegation.

Basically, the judge clearly recognizes Hood's effort for what it was: a broad fishing expedition that was partly "retaliation" against Google for daring to stand up for its right to run an online search engine. The case is far from over, but Hood (and his MPAA-assisted team) are going to have to move on to some other plan of attack. Maybe (just maybe), they can focus on (1) going after actual criminals, rather than made up ones and (2) telling the MPAA to learn how to innovate, rather than blame Google for its own failures.

from the flexible-pricing-packages-are-the-devil dept

For years, the United States has had an on again off again love affair with the idea of a la carte television -- or the ability to purchase only the channels you want to watch. After a ten-year debate, "common wisdom" appears to have largely decided against the idea, the public buying into the cable industry's argument that selling channels individually would: a) kill niche television channels and b) drive up the cost of cable. Of course, the cost of cable TV is climbing skyward anyway, and the Internet has become the perfect place for those niche channels to flee to. Frankly, I've always wondered why there's any hesitation when it comes to blowing up a sector in such dire need of meaningful disruption.

Thankfully, Canada has decided to go ahead and play the guinea pig for us in terms of exploring what an a la carte future would look like. After holding fifteen months of consumer hearings and waiting for years unsuccessfully for more flexible pricing options, Canadian regulatory agency the CRTC has decided to force the issue. The CRTC this week issued a ruling requiring not only that Canadian cable operators provide a discount $25 entry level core TV tier, but that above that, users are allowed to pick channels a la carte. In a statement, the CRTC explained it this way:

"Canadians, who choose to do so, will be able to supplement the entry-level television service by buying individual channels that will be available either on a pick-and-pay basis or through small, reasonably priced packages. If they so choose, they will have the option of selecting theme-based packages—such as sports, lifestyle or comedy—offered by their service providers.
By December 2016, Canadians will be able to subscribe to channels on a pick-and-pay basis, as well as in small packages. In addition, Canadians will have the choice of keeping their current television services without making any changes, if these continue to meet their needs and budgets."

Of course, the ruling is being met with all manner of hand-wringing from opponents of a la carte and the cable industry about how this is going to "destroy television as we know it." Canadian media has been flooded all week with stories about how this will only drive up costs, confuse consumers, harm the TV industry, result in cats and dogs sleeping together, and generally just wreak havoc on the TV ecosystem. Except, Canadian law professor Michael Geist points out that if you look past this breathy doomsday analysis in the press and actually ask real analysts, they point out the idea will probably save consumers money:

"Maher Yaghi of Desjardins Capital Markets says the changes could “lead to a reduction of $5 to $10 in monthly [revenue per user] as customers get the option to choose the channels they want to watch and move discretionary money toward OTT (over-the-top) services such as Netflix." Canaccord Genuity analyst Dvai Ghose suggests even bigger declines of $9 to $21 for some customers. In fact, Ghose notes that “current entry-level TV monthly prices for the large BDUs are as follows: Bell Fibe TV $45.95, Rogers Cable $40.48, Shaw $39.90 and Videotron $38.00 and Telus $34.00 ($29.00 if bundled).” A $25 service is obviously going to result in reduced spending for those consumers."

So yes, the claim that we should avoid a la carte TV because it will make TV bundles -- already seeing hikes many times the rate of inflation -- more expensive is just silly. So are the claims that forcing more flexible channel bundles on cable operators will somehow destroy quality television ("people will stop creating art if you don't help prop up our failing business model" has long been an entertainment industry rallying cry). While there are a few folks in the media who seem to get it, there's been a strange, overarching gushing adoration of the much-hated channel bundle in the media that's rather inexplicable, and in no way really tied to what consumers actually want. "Be careful what you wish for," the media logic seems to go, "or you'll pay a lot of money for cable television!" they bizarrely warn.

"Mr. Crull became angry with the CRTC’s so-called pick-and-pay decision last week.According to sources close to the network who spoke on condition of anonymity, Mr. Crull directed senior news staff at CTV, the country’s largest private broadcaster, to exclude Mr. Blais from coverage of the story on Bell-owned networks. The ruling will give consumers more freedom to choose individual TV channels as part of cable and satellite subscriptions, but it could also affect Bell’s bottom line."

After taking a media beating, Bell Media President Kevin Crull was forced to issue a mealy mouthed mea culpa stating he'd "learned a valuable lesson" about editorial control and really dumb decisions. Of course, Bell continues to insist the CRTC's move will only raise rates for consumers. Because, you know, cable TV rates weren't increasing under the current pay TV bundle model -- and keeping consumer prices low is every giant cable operator's top priority.

Meanwhile, those who've been claiming that a la carte TV will somehow destroy television as we know it now have an interesting petri dish to keep an eye on in Canada. Of course it's very possible the regulations are awful or at the very least accomplish nothing. I think one fair point made is the people most attracted to this "skinny bundle" may have already moved on to cheaper streaming options. Still, the CRTC has made it clear that after fifteen months of public hearings, this is what Canadian consumers have told them they want.

With consumers facing bi-annual rate hikes for an abysmal assortment of mediocre content and awful customer service -- isn't it time to at least start experimenting? I've always been confused by the hand wringing over consumer interest in a la carte, as if it's the consumer's job to somehow ensure that cable companies continue to make the sort of bloated profits they've long grown used to. Their only job is to demand quality product at a reasonable price, something cable companies across North America have been failing spectacularly at for more than a decade as they grow ever larger, consolidate, and then jack up programming rates as if it's going out of style.

Refusing to explore a la carte TV solely because we're worried it might harm the bloated profits of an apathetic TV industry makes little to no sense to me. These companies, in the U.S. and Canada alike, had a decade to adapt and have fought pricing and package evolution (not just a la carte but any package flexibility) tooth and nail every step of the way. Why not try something different? And if the cable companies and their 300-channel bundles of reality television dreck struggle to adapt to the one-two punch of regulatory intervention and competition from Internet video? Just maybe it was time for their ungracefully-aging business model to sail quietly into the sunset instead of pouting like a chubby, petulant child.

from the terminated-for-googling-'student-loans' dept

It's no secret that many companies monitor their employees' computer use. But things are going much further than simply ensuring the normal "don'ts" -- file sharing, porn viewing, etc. -- are tracked for disciplinary reasons. Companies are now on the lookout for the next "insider threat." Some companies are viewing the Snowden saga as the ultimate cautionary tale, albeit one that results in more surveillance rather than less. (via Dealbreaker)

Guarding against such risks is an expanding niche in the security industry, with at least 20 companies marketing software tools for tracking and analyzing employee behavior. “The bad guys helped us,” says Idan Tendler, the founder and chief executive officer of Fortscale Security in San Francisco. “It started with Snowden, and people said, ‘Wow, if that happened in the NSA, it could happen to us.’ ”

But the effort to find -- and prevent -- the next "insider threat" from damaging his or her company seems to be just as misguided as the government's efforts to do the same. Looking for potential threats often results in viewing almost everything as an indicator of future treachery.

One company cited "changes in email habits" as being indicative of an "insider threat." Others, like Stroz Friedberg, aren't as selective. The company, started by former FBI agent Edward Stroz, veers into the same dangerous territory the government does when rooting out "threats." In its hands, normal activities are viewed with suspicion by its monitoring software.

The software establishes a base line and then scans for variations that may signal that an employee presents a growing risk to the company. Red flags could include a spike in references to financial stresses such as “late rent” and “medical bills.”

And what better way to tackle "late rent" or "medical bills" than suddenly finding yourself unemployed simply because re-purposed FBI analytic software thinks any small sign of (possibly temporary) financial instability indicates your next move will be to steal something. Millions of people in the US deal with these realities frequently -- especially the latter. And yet, millions of employees still find other ways to tackle these problems instead of dipping their hands in the tills or running off with sensitive documents.

Stroz's software also thinks -- like the government -- that an unhappy employee is a malicious employee.

He offers the scenario of a star trader at a bank who’s disappointed with the size of her annual bonus. Instead of being blindsided when she defects to a rival, a bank using Scout could identify her discontent early and make sure she doesn’t take sensitive data or other team members with her.

Or, the company could try to work with the employee rather than just secretly track her until her eventual exit. Once again, unhappy employees leave companies all the time without taking anything with them. Sure, a few do, but the deployment of software like this will generally produce more false positives (and a further strain work relationships) than insider threats. And there's nothing like firing people for something they haven't done (but might!) to endear a company to its remaining employees.

Despite all of this, Edward Stroz believes his company's predictive employee policing software is just another way for companies to show their employees how much their staff means to them.

He’s still careful when discussing the software, describing it as a way to help employers build a “caring workplace.”

Oh, it's anything but. While employees will often accept monitoring of their internet/computer usage as being a necessary part of the employee-employer relationship, they're not going to be happy to find out that searching for information about medical bills might see them lose a source of income. And they're definitely not going to be thrilled to learn that expressing displeasure about company practices and policies may result in the same thing. If a company wants to foster a "caring workplace," it should be addressing employee discontent, not monitoring it. But what do you expect from companies -- and the entities that provide them with spyware -- that view the Snowden leaks as justifying increased surveillance?

Oh, and employees had better believe their file sharing use will be actively monitored (and used against them). Stroz Friedberg may be making enterprise pre-crime software now, but its past as an RIAA lobbying firm (and its slightly-later past as a Six Strikes "independent expert") has been well-noted.

from the court-of-wolves dept

It's hard to decide which is more infuriating: culture being stymied by copyright abuse, or simply by intricacies, stupidities and failures at the systemic level (with a dash of apathy and negligence thrown in). The latter is what led to the death of a classic game re-release this week, prompting Yes, I know I'm commenting anonymously to win most insightful comment of the week with a simple suggestion to fix the issue of orphaned and ambiguously-owned works:

I propose the same solution as for those `disappeared' mortgage contracts: contest the ownership in court and if it isn't quickly proved, the judge can declare a forfeit on the ownership (basically public domain-ing the content).

The high court of wolves said, "Of course the sheep can have justice. All it has to do is walk into our lair. If the sheep won't do that voluntarily, then obviously the sheep has done something wrong."

By institutions do you mean institutions like Kickstarter and Patreon, or services like bandcamp and Youtube, which are already being built; or do you mean new forms of publishers, who take control of works for their own profits?

All the creative arts are changing, and the balance is shifting towards models where the creator forms a more direct relationship with their fans and supporters. The changeover will be painful for the traditional publishers, and the creators who rely on them, mainly because the alternatives can function with mush smaller fan bases, so long as the role of middlemen is kept to a minimum, and the creators look to try and make a reasonable living, rather than a vast fortune.

Patents protecting small-time inventors from the big corporate baddies is the kind of nonsense you read in fairy tales. Even acquiring the patent in the first place is expensive (USPTO cost summary here), let alone suing for infringement, let alone the countersuit the big baddies can and will file against the upstart. How many lawsuits can a basement genius afford?

They'd be hard-pressed to design a system more rigged against the mythical "poor, lonely inventor".

It's not "big super computers" as you hyperventilate in your post. Rather, the well-informed representative was placidly referring to "big giant super computers." Try to get it straight next stop & end this dedication to pursuing your agenda from clouding your judgment.

Too modern, I'd picture them throwing rocks while brandishing a few roughly assembled weapons made of wood and stone and making grumbling noises. The mere sight of the led lamps in the boats is met with wild and violent reactions. It seems they haven't discovered fire yet.

My first family computer, when I was very young, had an Intel 286 processor. Eventually we upgraded to a 386, then a 486, and then we waited for the next iteration. The pattern was so well-established that I continued to casually call my first Pentium a "586" for quite some time. Why am I telling you all this? Because it was on March 22nd, 1993, that Intel released the very first Pentium processor, choosing that name because they were unable to secure a trademark on the numerical names and didn't like the fact that competitors were using them too, as with the AMD Am486. The name itself was coined by the same branding company that came up with BlackBerry, PowerBook, Zune, Swiffer, Febreze, DeskJet, Dasani, OnStar and many other brand names.

from the listen-up dept

For this week's awesome stuff, we've got some technology focused on improving your mobile music listening experience in a variety of ways.

MAGZET

For people with Apple laptops, the days of destroying your power cable by tripping on it are over thanks to the MagSafe connector. Unfortunately, the days of destroying your audio jacks and headphone connectors persist, and everyone knows the pain of having to jostle a broken plug around to get its weak connection to kick in. MAGZET aims to fix that by letting you turn any audio jack into a magnetic connector by connecting the small, two-piece device. As they point out, the standard audio jack hasn't been updated in a long time, and this could be just the smart revolution it needs.

UAMP

There have been many attempts to create products that will stymie the ascendance of lower-quality audio in the mobile device era, but most are overwrought and place too high a bet on the assumption that people truly care. The UAMP, however, is a nice and simple solution that can be easily adopted by those who want better sound without needing to go buy whole new specialty players: a small inline amplifier that lets you get more amplification at higher fidelity than those built into most consumer devices. It's USB-chargeable and about the size of an iPod Shuffle, and aims to retail for around $100.

Aivvy Q

The Aivvy Q is an interesting idea. Not only is it a pair of headphones with a built-in music player, controlled by touch gestures on the side — it actually aims to be a whole music solution for busy people. It grabs songs automatically from its own service while charging, then builds custom playlists and rotations based on your decisions to skip, listen, replay, etc. Of course, the big question is: where exactly is it pulling these songs from, will it require a subscription, and how confident are the makers that they can keep it licensed and robust? Though some of these things remain to be seen, the tech itself looks very cool. They do lose some points for the nonsensical claim that they are about "streaming music without internet", though (that appears to be their odd way of saying it downloads tracks while connected, then automatically plays or "streams" Pandora-style generated playlists from its internal storage later).

Police that night had been looking for a group of seven to nine African American men, including one shirtless one, who had been walking the streets, reportedly damaging property and yelling profanities. Within minutes of receiving the group's last known location, police several blocks away focused their attention on a group of three young men: Gurule, his 20-year-old brother and their friend.

That was the narrative up to the point where Thai Gurule found himself on the receiving end of fists and Tasers. Ignoring the fact that this group had little in common with the suspects other than race, we come to what turned this incident into a confrontation and, finally, a one-side melee.

Cue escalation. The officers decided to cuff Gurule (for "resisting arrest," apparently). As a crowd began to gather, the officers decided to move Gurule into a prone position for cuffing, supposedly for officer safety. But rather than let Gurule move to a prone position, one of the officers decided to speed up the process by sweeping Gurule's feet out from underneath him. From that point, it became an uncontrolled beating. One officer held Gurule by the hair while the other two wrestled him to the ground and hit him multiple times with their fists and knees. Finding the one-sided "struggle" to be ineffective, Sgt. Lile deployed his Taser.

After they were done throwing blows, the officers threw the book at Thai Gurule, listing all of the following charges on the police report:

The accompanying reports filed by the officers maintained that Gurule repeatedly swung his fists at officers and tried to choke one of them. Unfortunately for these officers, multiple recordings of the incident that contradicted their narrative were made available to the judge.

Judge Stewart was obviously irate at the thick stack of lies delivered to her in the form of police reports and sworn testimony. She also was none too happy with the officers' justification for initiating the arrest of a person who had done nothing more than fail to treat Officer Hughes with as much deference as he felt he deserved. Not only did she dismiss the charges, but she read the entire damning dismissal order out loud.

In discussing the "resisting arrest" charge, Judge Stewart also addressed the pure BS motivating the officers' arrest of Gurule. She points out there's an exceedingly low bar that needs to be met to satisfy the requirements for bringing this charge, but the officers couldn't even meet that.

Actual restraint was placed upon the youth at the moment that Officers Hughes and Hornstein placed control or escort holds on the youth. At that moment, even given the broad authority described above, there is insufficient evidence before the court that the Officers were operating under their community caretaking function, or therefore under color.

At that time, there is no evidence of concerns about a crowd forming. That concern arose as much as a minute later when the officers decided to take the youth to the ground.

Establishing this, she gets to the heart of the matter.

The only facts before the court are that the youth failed the attitude test when he turned and aggressively complained about Officer Hughes clapping him hands. Officer Hughes stepped forward and the youth stepped back and Officer Hughes, immediately followed by Officer Hornstein placed the holds restraining the youth.

And there it is: the bogus arrest was prompted by a little disrespect Officer Hughes just couldn't handle. It is surprising enough that a judge would call out an officer for this sort of behavior. It's even more surprising that she would move on to allowing an arrested suspect's self-defense claims stand. In most cases, the judicial branch shows deference to police officers who use excessive force in their self-defense ("feared for their safety"). In this instance, the deference went the other way.

[W]hile a person may not use physical force to resist what is actually or perceived by the defendant to be an unlawful arrest, a person may use physical force in defending oneself from excessive use of force by an arresting officer. Any injury caused to an officer in the course of engaging in a justifiable use of force to defend oneself may under such circumstances be justified and not criminal.

[...]

In this case, the youth's age is a relevant factor which the court considers even without the testimony of youth. Therefore, the question before the court is whether this youth and a reasonable 16 year old youth in his position would have believed that the use or imminent use of force against him exceeded the force reasonably necessary and whether he was entitled to defend himself with a degree of force which a reasonable 16 year old would reasonably believe to be necessary for the purpose.

[...]

The take down, although intended to be gentle and with adequate warning was nothing like that plan. Officer Hornstein swept the youth's feet out from under him causing him the sensation of falling forward without the use of his hands to break his fall. The next 35 to 45 seconds was a melee of fists and punches and bodies falling upon him. Prior to reaching the wall, the youth was attempting to regain his footing and get back on his feet and remove himself from what a reasonable person would have felt was a senseless and aggressive use of excessive physical force.

Once at the wall, the independent evidence of the video clips is less clear but continues to show the youth trying to struggle away from the officers rather than engage in a physical altercation…

[...]

[G]iven that confusion, rapidity of events, the tangle of officers and the youth and the confusion caused by the crowd, I find that as to all charges herein, the state has not established beyond a reasonable doubt that the youth was not reasonably justified in the use of self-defense as to all of the charges herein.

And with that, Thai Gurule is no longer facing criminal charges. As of yet, there's no word of what consequences, if any, are awaiting the officers involved. The city's police department is only a couple of years removed from a DOJ investigation, but incidents like these show there's still work to be done.

from the bye-bye-cable dept

Bear witness to the genesis of a new era, fellow sports fans. I've begged and pleaded in the past for the major professional sports leagues to take the harness off of the ability to stream games. Even as the trend of cord-cutting has progressed along nicely, I have always argued that the only dam keeping a flood of cord-cutters at bay has been professional sports broadcast deals. Those deals have almost universally been saddled with local blackout restrictions, making streaming games all but useless for the majority of fans. The past few years, however, have seen inched progress towards wider availabitily for streamed offerings. The NBA's most recent contract went out of its way to make sure streaming is expanded, for instance, not to mention the deal Dish and ESPN made to make the cable channel's broadcasts more accessible for streaming. But those were baby steps, too often leashed by a cable subscription requirement.

On Monday, the NFL announced the Oct. 25 regular season game between Jacksonville and Buffalo will be put up for bid on national digital platforms. The game is being played in London, meaning the broadcast will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET and 6:30 PT. That's not exactly prime time for U.S. fans, or broadcast television, but it is 'prime time' in China, where the NFL is struggling to gain a toehold.

"It's a one game test. We will evaluate fan feedback," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said via an email exchange. "It's too early to tell about the future [of streaming games]. Will test this season with the one game and evaluate after."

Separately, the NFL said it's going to drop its so-called blackout rule, which prevents local broadcasts of games if they're not sold out 72 hours before kickoff. NFL media executive Brian Rolapp said the league is "testing alternative ways to distribute games," The NYT reports, and acknowledged the obvious: "The world is changing very quickly."

If this seems like a small step, you don't know how savvy the folks in the NFL's media department are. They absolutely know where the trends have us all heading regarding media consumption and I can promise you they are keenly aware of how many people are currently watching streaming NFL games on illegitimate sites. The most consumed sport in the United States doesn't turn on a dime, but the league also doesn't put up this kind of test balloon without having a fairly certain idea of how it's going to play with its customers. Assuming the quality, cost (free?), and accessibility of this test game is anything remotely comparable to, say, baseball's MLB.TV offering, expect this to end up as an insanely successful test-run. I'd actually say that this test game feels more like the NFL looking for an excuse to jump fully into a streaming offering than some kind of fact-finding mission. After all, you only drop the blackout rule in conjunction with expanding streaming if you expect the locals to run with the offering full-force. And they will, I assure you.

The NFL's DirectTV and network deals mean streaming won't explode immediately, but everyone can see what the NFL is doing to position itself for the future.

Given its agreement with DirecTV and television networks -- the NFL signed $27 billion worth of contracts in 2011 -- the league will be restricted on what it can offer online, at least in the near term. But the NFL is "a master of dicing and splicing content in order to extract the greatest value," [media analyst Walt] Piecyk says. "It's not like they're committing to put a bunch of games [online] but I think they want to get more comfortable so if Google or Apple or Amazon comes down the pike and says 'we want to buy a larger chunk of games' they can get comfortable on tech front."

And speaking of MLB.TV, reports are that professional baseball is due to get its own expanded streaming offering. The MLB.TV service has long been the standard in sports streaming, with no other league offering really even coming close. The problem, however, was that local games were blacked out, so the service was only useful for out-of-town fans or die-hard baseball fans that will watch any MLB game any time it's available (me, for example). If recent reports are to be believed, however, MLB is looking to take a small step to changing the blackout rules for streaming.

Major League Baseball is expected to announce in the next few days a deal with a national distributor, like a wireless provider, to stream local games of every MLB team, a source close to the situation said Thursday.

To stream games of the New York teams, fans would have to be a customer of the distributor and pay for the YES Network or SNY, the regional sports networks (RSNs) that carry Yank and Met games, respectively. The price to stream has not yet been set.

This is an imperfect first step, of course, particularly as it carries with it the anchor of either a cable subscription, a specific wireless device provider, or both, but it's an important step in the right direction. It's something akin, actually, to the DirectTV deal the NFL has, except that it's more mobile and more widely available on a variety of devices. You should also expect any deal MLB signs for this streaming to be less locked in than the NFL/DirectTV deal, because, again, everyone knows where this is all heading. And, if the reports are true, even the television broadcasters are resigning themselves to reality.

Talks between MLB and Fox Sports, which owns 15 RSNs, including YES; Comcast, which owns six, including a minority stake in SNY; and DirecTV, which owns four, have been on-again, off-again for more than a year. The talks have accelerated in the last two weeks, and both sides are optimistic a deal will be reached before Opening Day, April 6. Under that agreement, fans would deal directly with their pay-TV provider.

Is it as perfect a solution as simply working out deals to unleash the local broadcasts on the MLB.TV stream that customers have been watching all the non-local teams on? No, absolutely not, but this first iteration's imperfection will only catalyze MLB to go the correct route in the future. Because the trends are clear: streaming is up and cable subscriptions are down. Even if the NFL and MLB don't get this right the first time, they will absolutely be forced to get it right in the near future.

Either way, one eventual reality is coming ever-closer to fruition: cable television, and perhaps television as a whole, may soon be over.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People eat all kinds of different things in different parts of the world. Some countries have well-known traditional meals and menu items, and foodies all over the internet are posting pictures of what they're eating all the time. Food-obsessed folks seem to like to capture snapshots of food -- both good and bad -- for fun and commentary. Here are some global food snapshots for you to look over that might not be all that appetizing.

from the where's-the-e? dept

I can't honestly claim to know a whole lot about e-cigarettes. That's because when I was still smoking, I smoked the old fashioned kind of cigarettes. You know, the ones made from tobacco, that cured acne, and that made my breath smell as cool and fabulous as a pub toilet. Plus, everyone was doing it and my lungs weren't going to give themselves cancer, so you know. But, even knowing little about e-cigarettes, I know enough to know that they aren't ale houses located in Riverdale, New Jersey. This is a conclusion that the lawyers over at Lorillard, makers of "blu" e-cigarettes, think is likely to escape the larger population, as they have decided to file a trademark dispute against Blu Alehouse over its name and logo.

The lawsuit filed by Lorillard Technologies Inc. centers on a logo that NJ Ale House LLC is using at its Blu Alehouse in Riverdale, N.J., Law360 reported. According to the news website, the logo features "the word 'blu' surrounded by smoke or flames." The subsidiary of Greensboro-based Lorillard (NYSE: LO) claims that the logo is too much like the branding for blu eCigs.

Let's leave everything else aside for a moment and simply take a look at the two logos to see if they look substantially similar on their own. First is the logo of Blu Alehouse. Note that this logo normally appears alongside the full name of the establishment.

And now the logo for blu Cigarettes.

Neither logo is particularly complicated, but even failing to correct for the simplicity of the designs, the two logos are distinctly different. If both logos didn't incorporate the word "blu" in them, there would be absolutely nothing to argue about here. And, again, that's strictly taking the logos into account with no other context. Because once we use the likelihood of customer confusion and the markets of competition tests, I'm failing to see how this wasn't tossed immediately upon a judge's review. An ale house isn't competing with cigarettes in any way. Add to that that it would be quite difficult for even the most moronic and hurried citizens to mistake the two companies for each other, what with the ale house's logo typically appearing alongside other signage that identifies itself as an ale house.

Strangely, an actual judge reviewing the claim thought differently.

U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty found that Lorillard — along with another subsidiary, LOEC Inc. — made "plausible claims for trademark infringement and unfair competition," and he ruled that the case could go on, Law360 reported.

How is the claim of unfair competition even possible? The two companies aren't competing with each other at all. The only mention of competition in the court filing by Lorillard is over the fact that sometimes they advertise their cigarettes at drinking establishments.

LTI and LOEC allege that Blu Alehouse bar and restaurant is directed at a similar consumer base as LTI and LOEC's BLU products because BLU products are promoted at bars, restaurants, and lounges.

But that doesn't actually put the companies in competition with one another. That would be like Budweiser claiming that Big Buds Magazine, here to serve all of your marijuana information needs, infringed on Budweiser marks because they occasionally sell beer to high people. Why should that matter at all?

Hopefully as this case moves forward, a more sensible conclusion is reached.